I greatly detested high school. At first, it was fun and interesting, but after a while it became trying. In retrospect, a fair amount of my time in high school was spent planning my future. Most of my high school career entailed me getting involved with various clubs and organizations. I did service, took leadership positions, and I was basically doing things I loved. Then around sophomore year, I started getting serious about college and began to focus more on doing things that would benefit me in the long run. But while this was happening for me, it wasn’t happening for a few of my peers.

People say that high school is the best time of your life. Well, they’re wrong. I found high school to be full of people who couldn’t understand that the present can damage your future, parties I never attended, because of the stupid things that went along with it, and drama that was ultimately childish and foolish, some of which I am ashamed to have been a part of. Comparing high school to college, I found that college is most definitely the most amazing, greatest, delicious time of your life. Not only do you get some sense of freedom and not having parents constantly breathing down your neck, but you also get a chance to find just exactly who you are. You are given the privilege to uncover your place in life and find the people that matter to you.

In one of my previous articles, I mentioned how I started as an education major. I had planned my life out to the tee, but then things changed and now I’m happily a speech pathology and audiology major. Besides discovering what I wanted to do with my life, (or what I’m planning to do, at least) I learned to better accept myself. I’ve also managed to appreciate the prospects I’ve been given, like attending school off-island, learning more about social justice issues, and appreciating who I was before leaving Guam.

College has changed my outlook on life. I understand that although school is important, letting go and having fun is also something I need to do. I learned that the hard way when I fainted in English. I was fine all morning until my last class, English. Right when we started class, I just felt gross and I began to leave the class. With my luck, I passed out right before I got to the door, and I ended up on the floor in front of my class. You do not know how embarrassing that was, but I’m still alive and I honestly think it was a hilarious thing in the world. Still, my little swooning episode (swoon, because it sounds more dramatic and attractive) made me realize I need to take better care of myself.

Things like this have broadened my mind, and now I’ve realized that living life only in the present is not something I want to do. I want to learn from the past, live for today, while planning for the future. With this, I have the chance to be open-minded and susceptible to learning new skills. I found a way to use the gifts that I have for things more than me. My most recent article was made, because of what I learned from being at Marquette. I learned how to write a pretty solid argumentative paper, and I learned that just yelling or ranting about an issue isn’t helping your cause.

With all these changes that have occurred in just nine months, I’ve grown to appreciate more things. I appreciate my roots, my culture, my high school, my family, my chance to attend Marquette; I value it all. With all of this realization going on in my life, I began to notice that other people don’t have the same circumstance that I do.

While I was back in the states, I noticed just how different my life was from my peers from high school. While I spent my time discovering a city and hanging out in dorm rooms, some peers back home were drinking alcohol like soda and smoking weed all the live long day. While I attended a social justice conference, some peers went out to eat dinner or go to a club. While I worked to buy supplies, food and clothes to match the different weather, my peers enjoyed the comfort of their home. The point is that while I was becoming this dynamic character, quite a few of my peers stayed static. It was disheartening to know that some people could not grow beyond who they were in high school. We’re practically adults, but yet it was as if high school never ended. So, as time went on, I slowly lost touch with people. I barely spoke to my peers and if I did, it wasn’t for long.

Since returning to Guam, I’ve been feeling out of place, and I never knew it until I spoke to my friend Ivana a few days ago. She informed me that she went home to Peru and while she was there, she felt like Peru, the place she grew up in and loved, did not feel like home anymore. Although Guam is the place I was born, I no longer feel like I’m welcome, in a sense. I feel more at ease and comfortable when I’m in Milwaukee, where I can be with like-minded friends and mentors. Here on Guam, it’s almost as if people I knew in high school have faded into memory.

But not all my friendships are ending up with me feeling estranged.

My best friend, Erin, came to the airport the day I left with a handful of my other female companions. As she began to tear up, I gave her my parting gift. The envelope contained a note, a Taco Bell sauce packet, a penny and a picture of us. The note was a heartfelt one that detailed my resolve to still be her best friend; the sauce signified a piece of our friendship and served as a reminder of all the times we ate at Taco Bell for fun; the penny was a joke that stood for the money I owed her for some Taco Bell trips; the picture was just a nice way to remember me, because why not.

When I got to Milwaukee, I called her once every few days. That turned into once every few weeks and then once a month, and finally, whenever I had the chance. Everyone says that you can maintain your friendships with people back home. In my case, it was harder that it normally was. The time difference and, more importantly, life needed to be taken into account. When I’m about to go to work at night, Guam is waking up. When I’m just waking up at seven in the morning, Guam is getting ready to sleep. The only way I ever got the chance to talk to family and friends was if I stayed up late or woke up really early.

Because of the time difference, I could barely speak to Erin before she slept, because while my world continued to move, so did hers. She had school, work and other things to do, while I had the same. Eventually, we developed a routine conversation where we would repeatedly WhatsApp each other saying things like, “Okay,” “I get it,” “You hate me,” “Wow,” “Okay,” “Just ignore me.” This turned poisonous at some point, unfortunately, because when we would catch each other we’d argue half the time over being ignored and whose life was busiest. Then we’d get into how if I, or she, had just told the other where we were applying to, we could have gone to the same college. Then I would bring up the fact that she took the merit scholarship to the University of Guam and left me in the States. I would tell her that I could have spent Christmas with her in Texas, but no, she decided to stay on Guam and let me live all alone in Milwaukee. She would argue that I told her to take it, and I would argue that telling her not to would make me less of a friend. I mean, who am I to deny my best friend a chance at free college? Halfway through the school year, I just felt that I wouldn’t be able to maintain my friendship with her any longer.

The distance was enough to put us out of touch for a while, but when I finally came home, we resumed our friendship like I never left. We went to Taco Bell the first night we hung out. On the way there, we sang “Anaconda,” “Jealous” and other songs that made things normal.

As stated in my previous article, my experiences have shaped me into a new person and, in my opinion, a better person. I’m not stuck up, as people have called me since coming back, but instead, I’ve weeded at the people I need in my life and the people that hold me back. I want to be a person that sticks to the values and beliefs of the Chamorro people, while moving forward into the Western culture we live in. And no, this doesn’t mean I’m “Americanized.” It means I know what I want in life, and if people have to leave mine because of it, then so be it. I’m living for me above anything else, which is what any college student should be doing.